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The government has informed the Supreme Court that Muslims have a right to establish Shariat panchayats to settle disputes between two people and fatwas issued by these courts are not in conflict with or parallel to the Indian judicial system.

India's personal laws are based on religious affiliation, granting special rights to the country's Muslims. Nadja-Christina Schneider discusses religious minority rights and secular modernisation on the subcontinent.

The Supreme Court Wednesday put objections from the Gujarat government aside and sought details of 17 incidents of communal violence in 2002 to decide on the question of shifting of these cases for trial outside the state.

The pronouncements of Muslim clerics following the conviction of Imrana's father-in-law for rape are revealing in many respects. After Imrana's alleged rape, Muslim clerics held that there had been no rape and she continued to be her husband's wife.

For the first time, women in India have legal protection against abuse in their own homes. It is the first time Indian law has recognised marital rape, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse of a woman by her husband as crimes.

Asghar Ali Engineer's aim is to make progressive thinking accessible to lay people and to bring it beyond the borders of a select group of intellectuals. A portrait of the Indian Muslim thinker by Fatma Sagir.